


The Shade

by Rainbow_Femme



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: After death, Angst, Dialogue partially taken from the books, Fluff, M/M, POV Achilles, patrochilles - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 10:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4621704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_Femme/pseuds/Rainbow_Femme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The time after Achilles' death from his point of view, with lines of dialogue from the book as well as original content.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shade

Achilles heard the arrow first. A soft whistling in the air, just behind his left ear that caught the edge of his attention. He turned slightly, listening, wondering what it could be, before he felt it pierce the skin of his back, pushing through muscle and into his heart. He stood for a moment, shocked, before the realization that finally,  _finally,_ it was all over came to wash over him. A smile spread across his face as he fell to his knees, angry shouts of his countrymen surrounding him as they ran towards him, but he did not care. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to fall forward as he slipped away into an extended moment of nothingness.

The next thing he knew, he was standing beside his own body, looking down at himself. He had not known he had let himself look so... Dead, far before his death. The color was faded from his cheeks, the light had left his hair dull and listless. He was covered in dust and old blood. He hadn't looked in a mirror since Patroclus died, he hadn't felt any reason to, but he was still surprised by how far he truly had fallen. After everything he had sacrificed to claim his fame, this was not how he had wanted to be remembered.

Looking up from his body, he found himself frozen to the spot. There in front of him was Patroclus, looking down on his body mournfully, his face filled with a deep sorrow, seemingly unaware that Achilles was standing just next to him. He looked just as he had the last time Achilles had seen him alive, his hair unmatted with blood, his face free of any physical pains, no wound mottling his dark, perfect abdomen. He could almost pretend that he was alive, if not for the way his chest did not move without any more need for breath. Achilles couldn't place the strangled noise that came from his throat as he lurched forward, desperate to grab hold of him, to pull him as tightly to him as he could and never again let him go for the rest of their eternities.  _Look at me, Patroclus, I am here._

But just as he moved, Patroclus was gone. On earth, the dead could not see each other, they could only wander alone until they were buried. He had been given a brief glimpse but could have no more, not until they were both finally buried and given their final rest. He stared at the spot he knew Patroclus was standing, burning the image into his eyes as much as he could, imprinting it on his entire being to be cherished until the real thing could be by his side once more. Until then, he would have to wait and wander on his own. And truly, he hated waiting.

The sea nymphs came for his body next, cleaning and preparing him until he looked as he had in his prime; soft, unblemished, and shining like the sun even on his own funeral pyre, flowers woven into his hair. He knew he should find it a strange sensation to see himself consumed by the flames, to be surrounded by the men he had spent the last ten years of his life with without any of them knowing he was there, but he couldn't keep his mind on any of it. He kept wondering if Patroclus was by his side and didn't know it, if he could feel him if he tried hard enough. He wondered what the afterlife would be like, hoped that it would like their time on Mt. Pelion; an eternity of swimming and talking and reacquainting himself with every inch of his beautiful Patroclus, refilling himself on the real thing after months of starving without him. He wanted nothing more than to fuse himself to Patroclus for eternity and never let him go. For now, mingling their ashes would be enough, knowing that once they were together nothing could ever truly separate them again. Not time, not his mother, not any war or commander or hurt could take one from the other.

Hurt. What if Patroclus didn't want him after all this? He had denied him his burial so long, he had been the very reason he met his death. He had stomped and pouted and raged like a child and made Patroclus watch everyone he cared for die to soothe his own pride, leading him to his death. He wouldn't want himself back after something like that.

But Patroclus was different, he was not like Achilles, selfish and self absorbed. He was kind and good, the best of men, he had always found ways to forgive Achilles in the past. Surely he could forgive one last time? And hadn't he promised all those years ago that Achilles could never offend him? No, that had already proven to be untrue. He had hurt and offended Patroclus many times on this venture. He had done it again and again, always making every choice to better serve only himself. He had blinded himself so completely that he could not see what he was doing, nor how anyone was affected by it, least of all his Patroclus. Why hadn't he snapped out of it the night Patroclus came back with a slashed wrist? He had willingly mutilated himself to try and save someone Achilles had put directly into danger. He should have known back then that he had taken things too far, but he was blind. The gods were cruel to only now let  him see the whole of the damage he had caused, like Heracles and the madness that had driven him to kill his family. He only hoped that once they were rejoined in the underworld, Patroclus would be willing to listen one last time to his apologies. He would throw himself on his knees in placation in front of Patroclus, renounce his name, his fame, the godly blood that had flowed through his veins. He would let it all be stripped from him as long as Patroclus would remain by his side. He could not bear an eternity without him, he had hardly survived on earth. But it would be far worse there, with no promise of death to free him from the agony.

Once the flames had consumed him, Odysseus went to his mother, whose presence he had all but missed, and spoke to her, kneeling.

"Goddess, we would know your will. Shall we collect the ashes?"

Achilles blanched, horrified. How could they leave this up to her? Surely she would never agree to him being left to rest with Patroclus.

"Collect them. Bury them. I have done all that I will."

Well, that he had not expected. Perhaps Pyrrhus had so surpassed him in her heart that she could not care less what was done with him.

"Great Thetis, your son wished that his ashes be placed-"

"I know what he wished. Do as you please. It is not my concern." With the sound of the receding surf, she vanished, a salted mist left in her wake. 

Servant girls walk towards the pyre, carrying the urn that holds what is left of his Patroclus. He can see the spots on the urn that are smoother than the rest of it, places he had rubbed his hands obsessively. He watched them mingle their ashes, hoping beyond hope that he would feel something, see something of Patroclus. But there was nothing. He felt nothing, and remained as alone. 

He then sat idly as the council decided how to make his monument. He wished they would carve his name on a rock and be done with it, it did not matter to him. But this, all this arguing over whether he would like it best in this spot or that, whether he would prefer this spot on the hill or that one in the Agora. They could bury him with the sacrificial beasts if that was what it took to end this. 

He felt the air change before they did. A sensing he had learned from a life with his mother. He did not need to turn to know who was there, though the thought did turn his stomach, even before he heard him speak.

"I have come to take my father's place." The voice cuts the air like a blade, killing the conversation and turning all heads to him. He burns with a freezing heat, his hair of fire yet his eyes of ice. Achilles could see himself far more in the boy than he cared for, though he could see bits of the boys mother within as well, just below the frozen surface. "I am the son of Achilles."

Odysseus speaks first, the only one with sense enough not to simply stand and stare. "May we know the name of Achilles' son?"

The boy, or rather man, looked upon them coolly, towering unnaturally for someone his age. "My name is Neoptolemus. Called Pyrrhus." The name brought Achilles back to another time, a time on a small and forgotten island where the world had seemed to stop and he could pretend that war belonged to another life separate from his own. "Where is my father's seat?"

The boy took the soon vacated seat with an air of privilege only Achilles' mother could have instilled in him. He told the men of his time beneath the sea among the gods, of the prophecy that foretold Troy only falling with his assistance. Achilles did not listen, until talk of his own tomb was brought up once again. Odysseus comments that he and Patroclus might prefer a spot on their hill, overlooking the beach. This use of the plural catches Pyrrhus' attention.

"Them?" Pyrrhus' eyes flash angrily to the men. 

"Your father and his companion, Patroclus."

Pyrrhus narrows his eyes. "And why should this man be buried beside  _Aristos Achiaon_?"

Menelaus speaks slowly and carefully, wary to keep the young prince's fury from flaring as his father's often did. "It was your father's wishes, Prince Neoptolemus, that their ashes be placed together. We cannot bury one without the other. 

"A slave has no place in his master's tomb." His voice lashes sharply. "If the ashes are together, it cannot be undone, but I will not allow my father's fame to be diminished. The monument is for him, alone."

_No!_ They could not let him do this, they wouldn't. Patroclus had been their friend, much more than Achilles had ever been. They would not abandon his soul to wander for eternity, forgotten and unsung.

"Very well." Agamemnon's voice is unfeeling, uncaring for the man that saved his life from Achilles' righteous anger. "It shall be as you say."

Achilles cries his agony to the skies, but there is no one that can hear it.

\--

Achilles watches as the stone is dragged from the quarry, following Odysseus, Menelaus, anyone with power, begging them to save his Patroclus, to not listen to Pyrrhus. 

_You knew what he was to me, you know what he was to every man, woman, and child here. You would disgrace him and condemn him over the will of a child?_ But whether they could not hear or chose not to was never known, none would speak a word against the god child. He is only one quarter god yet they respect his divinity far more than they ever did Achilles'. He had seen fear in their eyes before, when looking upon Troy's soldiers or their burning ships, but never when looking on a single man. They seemed to truly fear him in a way they had not feared even Hector or Sarpedon. When he walked into a room, all air seemed to seep away and leave nothing but an uncomfortable, cloying silence. Even behind the veil of death, Achilles could feel it, like an icy hand closing around his lungs. He waited for someone, anyone, to be willing to say that they would not take orders from a child, would not fear a child. But none did.

He had hoped that when Pyrrhus confronted Briseis, for surely it was only a matter of time with his voyeuristic lust for women who he felt belonged to other men, the others would come to her aid. Perhaps the other women who love her, or the men who knew her and knew the relationship between him and Patroclus, and Patroclus and Briseis. But again, no one would dare enrage him. Perhaps they worried he might leave, and Troy would never fall. Perhaps they feared what powers living among the gods could have endowed within him. Perhaps it was the cold deadness of his eyes, the unpredictability of his anger, that he was just as skilled as Achilles but with even less control over his temper. Whatever it was, the camp was silent as she fled from the tent, Pyrrhus' blood on her hands and his eyes on her throat.

After Pyrrhus kills Briseis as she flees through the waves, he sees her flash before him for a moment, her eyes saddened that she was to see Achilles and not Patroclus in her time of death. They stare at one another a moment, neither speaking. Her hair hangs dry about her face despite the water she died in, making Achilles wonder if he too looks different from how he died. He hopes so, he thinks, or else Patroclus may never recognize him. And in a moment she is gone just as Patroclus was. He is glad she is free now, free from the Greeks, free from everything to do with this wretched war, and hopes she will finally see her slain family again in whatever afterlife awaits her people.

He tries beseeching Pyrrhus in his sleep, demanding he honor his father's companion, hailing curses upon him should he deny him this. But in his sleep he never stirred, never seemed to feel his presence or give any indication that he knew or cared for his wishes. Achilles' fame would add to his own, and he would not dare risk hurting his fame over someone he viewed as nothing more than a slave. As Achilles raged and cursed, he felt as if he were trapped behind glass and could do nothing to affect the world around him. Once again, he had made all the wrong choices and Patroclus would be the one to pay the price.

\--

When Troy finally fell, he was sitting on what he had come to know as his and Patroclus' hill, facing the ocean. He could not care if Troy fell or did not fall, it meant nothing to him now. He was trying to remember every moment they had spent together here. Time passes differently now that he was dead, and it often disconcerted him. He loses himself in his thoughts one moment, thinking or a night he and Patroclus had spent spitting olive pits at one another, and the next he is surrounded again by Greeks returning already from their victory of Troy. The excitement he had expected to come from such a victory is not there. In fact, many of the men look ill. After a moment of listening, he hears that Pyrrhus killed Andromache's child in front of her, dashing the child against the stone walls as if it were nothing, as if he were casting aside a clay pot. They whisper that he truly had the ruthlessness of a god within him, that even Achilles left the youngest of a family alive to continue the line. Achilles knew that even with everything he had done, he at least would not have done that. 

It is only a matter of time now before they leave and abandon Patroclus here, on this sullen stretch of land that held only unhappiness and death for him.

When the monument is complete, Pyrrhus demands a final sacrifice at his grave. Now that he has been buried, he cannot move far from his grave, only the length of the beach left for his wanderings, forcing him to watch the shameful masquerade of faux care and love. Hector's widowed family stand behind Pyrrhus, their eyes red from their tears but defiant. The women of Troy remain proud even in their shackles. 

He watches as a pure white heifer is led to the grave with a listless disinterest. He wants this to be over, he lives only for the night now when he can whisper in their sleeping ears, begging them to save Patroclus. The man in charge of the heifer reaches for the knife to begin the sacrifice, but Pyrrhus stills his hand.

"A single heifer. Is this all? The same you would do for any man? My father was _Aristos Achaion_. He was the best of you, and his son has proven better still. Yet you stint us?"

_Patroclus was the best of us, the prophecy by the gods themselves said it was so. And you are no better than anyone. You are a petulant child, nothing more._

He had expected Pyrrhus to ask for the rest of the animals to be sacrificed, a hecatomb perhaps. He had not expected him to grab the young princess Polyxena and drag her to the alter.

"This is what my father's soul deserves."

Achilles mind flashed to Agamemnon's daughter being killed in front of him, thinking one moment she was safe only to be killed in the next. He lunges at Pyrrhus, flying uselessly through him. He looks up from the sand to see Pyrrhus smiling darkly, as if he knew what had happened.

"Achilles is pleased." And with that, Achilles watched in horror as the young girl is killed in front of him. He can feel the blood splash onto him as it floods over his grave, seeping into the soil of his earthen tomb. It seems to fill his nose, his mouth, his eyes, choking him. The dead young girl flashes before him as Briseis and Patroclus had, looking down at where he still half lay on the ground, her eyes flooded with tears, a pained question of  _Why?_ poised on her lips, but she too disappears as quickly as she had appeared, and he is once again alone. He had wished he could tell her it was not what he had wanted. Pyrrhus wipes the blood from his hands casually on his clothes.

That night is his last chance to save Patroclus. He goes to Odysseus, knowing he is the only one among them brave enough to stand up to Pyrrhus.

_Odysseus, you must not let him be abandoned. His eternity rests on you, will you deny him this? Will you abandon a faithful soldier and friend, a fellow lover? Think of your eternity without your wife. Would you be able to bear it? Would you make us bear it?_

Odysseus moves slightly in his sleep, his eyes fluttering, giving him hope.

_Awaken and speak with him. This is your last chance to make things right._

Whatever is left of his ghostly heart, it soars when Odysseus rises from his tent and goes to seek Pyrrhus. 

"My apologies for bothering you so late, Prince Pyrrhus." He smiles easily, trying to make himself comfortable more than Pyrrhus.

Pyrrhus does not look up at him from the gold he is inspecting. "I do not sleep."

"How convenient. No wonder you get so much more done than the rest of us."

Pyrrhus narrows his eyes but says nothing, waiting for the Prince of Ithaca to get to his point.

"Wine?" Odysseus hold up his wine skin, hoping it will somehow ease things.

"I suppose." He half turns to Andromache in a small corner of the tent. "Leave us." She hurries from his presence as Odysseus pours.

"Well." Odysseus starts after an awkward moment of silence. "You must be pleased with all you have done here. Hero by thirteen? Not many men can say so." He takes a sip of his wine.

"No other men." His wine remains untouched, his cold eyes watching Odysseus warily. "What do you want."

He sighs and puts down his goblet, squaring himself. "I'm afraid I have been prompted by a rare stirring of guilt."

Pyrrhus raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Achilles swallows thickly. This is his last chance, this has to work. He will have nothing left to try after this.

Odysseus clears his throat. "We sail tomorrow, and leave many Greek dead behind us. All of them are properly buried, with a name to mark their memory. All but one. I am not a pious man, but I do not like to think of souls wandering among the living. I like to take my ease unmolested by restless spirits." He tries for a friendly smile between them, as if to say that this is all very obvious and Pyrrhus must agree with him. It makes Achilles nervous; Pyrrhus does not take being talked down to kindly.

Odysseus continues when Pyrrhus does not speak. "I cannot say I was your father's friend, nor he mine. But I admired his skill and valued him as a soldier. And in ten years, you get to know a man, even if you don't wish to. So I can tell you now that I do not believe he would want Patroclus to be forgotten."

Achilles nods along with him, Odysseus saying everything he wishes he could say. Patroclus cannot ever be forgotten, he deserves his rest. Pyrrhus had to give it to him, he had to.

But when he looks to his son, he has stiffened angrily. "Did he say so?"

"He asked that their ashes be placed together, he asked that they be buried as one. In the spirit of this, I think we can say he wished it." Odysseus speaks as if to a child, slow and dripping with a condescending patience, making Achilles even more nervous.

"I am his son. I am the one who says what his spirit wishes."

_I wish for Patroclus, I wish for him to get what any man deserves in death._

Odysseus seems to sense that he is losing him. "Which is why I came to you. I have no stake in this. I am only an honest man, who likes to see right done."

"Is it right that my father's fame should be diminished? Tainted by a commoner?"

_If anything, it is I who will taint his memory. His gentle name should not be next to a bloody one such as mine. He should be remembered for his good deeds, not my dark ones._

Odysseus does his best to save the situation, telling Pyrrhus of how Patroclus had been a prince, of the men he killed in battle. But Pyrrhus will have none of it. Achilles falls to his knees in the tent. Odysseus tries appealing to his sense of charity but again there is nothing. Pyrrhus is as immovable as the ocean itself, he will not yield. 

Finally Odysseus stands, his hands open and empty. "I have done my best. Let it be remembered I tried."

Odysseus leaves the tent and Pyrrhus goes back to his coins. Achilles doubles over on himself, grabbing his hair and yanking it from his head, crying out in despair. Pyrrhus smiles a little to himself.

\--

The next day, he stands at his grave as they begin chiseling his name into the monument. He slams his fists against the monument, screaming. He claws at it, clawing Patroclus' name a thousand times over onto its smooth surface to no avail. The shining stone mocks him, mocks his inability to do this one thing. He has battled gods and won, he has killed the greatest heroes the world had to offer, he was _Aristos Achiaon_ , but he cannot save the one thing he loved in this world. He feels himself slipping away as they carve, sees the glint in Pyrrhus' eyes. He has not been filled with such murderous fury since facing Hector.

He hopes that someone, anyone, will write Patroclus' name on as well. He hopes someone, anyone, is brave enough to save him and risk the wrath of Pyrrhus. But no one is. They all stand back and watch quietly, their eyes darting to the boats and the promise of home. They no longer care for anything but their home lands and families. Patroclus is already forgotten by all the men who owe their lives to him.

He clings to the monument, not wanting to leave the world if Patroclus is still here. Even if he never saw Patroclus again he would  _know_ he was here, he could find a way to him. He could survive on the knowledge that somehow they were still together. But when the chisel is taken off and his name has been finished, he is gone, the grass beneath his knees replaced by the black sands along the banks of the river Styx. He casts around wildly.

"No!" It is the first time he has heard his own voice since he died and the sound assaults his ears, echoing harshly off the blackened stone. He scrambles to his feet, his godlike agility gone from him in the afterlife, leaving him like any other mortal. He looks around him, hoping to see Patroclus beside him, hoping still that someone would save him. But he does not appear. His chest heaves as the crushing reality that he will truly never see Patroclus again slides through his veins. It is like a hand closing around his throat, stopping all breath and sense. He begins running wildly, hoping he can somehow find his way back to the world of the living if he simply runs long enough, his breaths choked and ragged as they claw their way out of his raw throat. "Patroclus!"

He runs until he he trips, falling to his knees, pounding the rock in despair, sobbing into the cold damp air of the underworld.  _It's not fair!_ "It should have been me!" _  
_

He hears a throat being cleared to his right and looks up, seeing the ferryman and his boat sitting low in the black waters beside him as if he had not run at all. He does not wipe his eyes or try to make himself presentable. He does not care, about anything. He has left his heart back in the world of the living and he cannot get it back.

"I am to take you to the afterlife. Please get on the boat." The man looks at him without expression, waiting not patiently, but with an air of having all the time in the world to wait out Achilles' outbursts. His skin is a pale blue gray and he is covered in a long flowing cloak, the only part of him visible his weathered old hands and his impassive face, his eyes an unnerving empty black mirroring their surroundings.

"I cannot, I have to get back. He is waiting for me, they have left him behind. I have to go back to him. I have to." He gets back to his feet, ready to run again, only to see that there is no where to run. Dark, unending tunnels flank him on either side, he would be left running nowhere for eternity. The only way to get anywhere is by the boat.

"You cannot go back. Those of the living world cannot come to the afterlife and those of the afterlife cannot go to the living world. If you are going to mourn, it will not matter where you do it so I suggest you board the boat and do it in your proper place."

Achilles' shoulders slump, defeated. The man is right, and he has no fight left in him to argue. He drags himself forward and sits on the boat, the man dipping his oar into the water and slowly moving them forward. He looks down into its inky surface as they glide over the water. He remembers one night on Mt. Pelion he and Patroclus had lain together in their bed, Patroclus' mouth by his ear as he told him the story of Narcissus, how he spent his trip to the afterlife gazing at his own adoring reflection. As he gazed down at his own reflection, it began transforming until he could only see Patroclus rather than himself in the water, those large, beautiful eyes filled with hatred, blaming Achilles for his eternal exile, his death, everything he had ever done. He looked away from the water, unable to meet those eyes and the truth they held.

They came outside of a tunnel to a set of gates. On the other side, he could see the Elysian fields waiting for him.

"Is there no where else I could go?" The ferryman raised a quizzical brow at him. "I do not deserve to be rewarded after the things I have done."

The man shook his head. "It is not for you to judge yourself, that was for the gods. They have chosen your fate." With that, he turned his back on Achilles and returned to the tunnel, leaving Achilles to walk through the gates and into the field for the virtuous and the heroes, of which he felt like neither.

He was surprised when he turned to his right and saw Hector speaking with Sarpedon casually, as if nothing had happened, as if they were taking a stroll thorough the courtyards of Troy. When they looked to him he expected anger, at least from Hector. After all, he had dragged the mans body around his home city for days, forcing him to watch. But instead he nodded respectfully from his place before continuing his conversation, as if Achilles were a visiting prince in his home and not the man who killed him. It seemed all living rivalries had died with them.

As he continued walking, he recognized many heroes from his fathers and Chirons tales. They all would come up to him, wishing to congratulate him, saying they had heard so much of him. He tried to appease their curiosity with all the grace and esteem he had been taught as a prince, but he could only speak with them for so long before drifting off on his own again, unable to keep up any cheerful charade. He could not enjoy their company, every time he saw someone he could only think "Patroclus would love to see this, Patroclus would love to be here."

He found a spot beside a river like the one on Mt. Pelion and stood, watching the water. Everything beautiful about the fields seemed faded and dulled to him, the sky seemed to be a permanent twilight, the light reflecting off the water unremarkably. Looking down at the river, his tears began flowing freely once again. He had tried so hard, had done everything he could, and he had still failed. He was useless. What use was every skill he had been bestowed with if he could not save him? He looked up at the pale sky.

"I am sorry, Patroclus."

\--

He knew that time passed. He knew that his father soon joined the fields, that he looked for him still. He even knew that Pyrrhus joined the fields as well, far before he ever thought that he would. He could feel the fury from him, feel it flooding from wherever he walked, making every former warrior stay clear of him. He had been promised a chance at becoming a god, but was not relegated to a fameless death among other mortals. At one time he may have felt a sense of vengeance in this, but now Achilles did not care, could not care. It felt like a thousand years and nothing at all. The only evidence of the passing of his time was the eroding of the stone beneath his feet, worn away by the relentless flowing of his tears. He had once heard a story of a woman's tears that had filled a lake that existed to that day. He had thought such a thing to be impossible at the time, but now he understood what a depth of sorrow this great could do to a person, that they could cry enough tears to change the face of the earth itself in their pain. Sometimes he simply stood, staring over the water listlessly, feeling far too empty inside to move or care. Other times, his despair would crush him to the ground and he would beat it with his fists, lamenting the unfairness of the gods, of fate, of the entire world existing as it did to lead to Patroclus being left to wander the earth alone. His arms felt terribly empty. When Patroclus had died, he'd held his body, pressing his lips to his cool forehead and caressing his cool cheek, pretending that he was only sleeping and would soon awaken and come back to him. After he had been cremated, he would hold his urn to his chest, stroking the smooth, shimmering surface. He would hold it before battles, after battles, while he slept. It was the only thing he had left to himself of comfort. But now, he had nothing. He had truly never felt so desperately alone.

The world around him grew darker as his despair grew stronger. Soon, he could barely see the bubbling river before him, nor hear it or any of the heroes surrounding him. He did not know if that meant he had withdrawn so far into himself that he had lost sense of the world, or if they were all avoiding him as the soldiers had on earth. He would not blame them if he did, he would not want to be in his own company.

Day and night do not exist to him, time has ceased to be. He knows only his sorrow and his desperate need for his other half, or to let himself be in his place.

At first, the sound seems earth shattering coming from his world of silence, although it is only the sound of bare feet making their way through the grass. He looks up to find whoever has disturbed his silence but he cannot see. He reaches his hand forward, searching. Warm fingers meet his own, closing around his hand, and the world explodes with a brilliant light, illuminating everything around him, hiding nothing. He flinches in surprise but the hand stays firmly clasped around his own, not letting him go. When he can finally see again, he thinks it must be a cruel trick of the gods who have finally decided he must be punished, there could be no other way that Patroclus could be standing in front of him, smiling at him like he truly was happy to see him. 

He must have been staring, because Patroclus chuckled, shaking his head. "Aren't you going to say hello?"

When it hits him that this is really and truly Patroclus, he throws his arms around his neck, burying his face in his hair soundlessly, terrified that he might break the spell and Patroclus will disappear. Patroclus holds him just as tight, shaking and grabbing at his clothes, his hair, his arms, anything he can get his hands on to prove to himself that it really is him.

Achilles falls to his knees, pressing his face to Patroclus' stomach, breath ragged. He presses his mouth to the bare skin of that perfect abdomen, over where the death blow had been struck. Here, he told himself, here he would lavish most with love, should Patroclus let him. And here, as he moved his mouth up and to the right, along his ribs, is where the first spear struck him. Here as well he would always love best. He would cover every inch of his skin with love until they both drowned in it, if only Patroclus would let him.

Patroclus' hands found their way to his hair, stroking it gently. Achilles holds him tightly, wanting to imprint everything about this moment onto his memory.

"I am so sorry, Patroclus..." He holds him tighter, tears thickening his throat. The tears would not fall, he did not know if he had perhaps run out of them, but he struggled to speak beyond them. He presses his face to his stomach, unable to meet those honest eyes. "I am so sorry for everything, everything. I was wrong, I was selfish, I was immature and I was cruel in every way I could have been, over nothing. Whatever I need to do to make it up to you I shall do Patroclus, I swear it. Just please, do not leave me. I did not mean for any of this to happen, you were never supposed to get hurt, I would have taken a thousand spears for you had I known you were in danger..."

Patroclus drops to his own knees in front of him, pulling him tightly to his body once again. "Oh Achilles... There is nothing to forgive."

Achilles presses his face to his warm neck, inhaling deeply the wonderful scent of his Patroclus, feeling his arms encircling him. Resting his cheek on his shoulder, he can feel the sun warming his skin for the first time since Patroclus' death and he wonders, dimly, how he had not noticed in all this time that he had been standing beneath its zenith the whole time. 

 

 


End file.
